So, when it came to the genetic lottery category eyesight, I did not win. This is my prescription:
Left eye: -1,00
Right eye: -4,00
I also have astigmatism only in my right eye. Getting contact lenses and glasses has always been a pain, but I digress.
I have an office job that involves staring at a computer for most of the day. When getting my glasses, I asked if it made sense to wear them when working, but the optometrist said not to do that since I’m near-sighted anyways. The issue with that is that my right eye is so bad, that even if I’m sitting half a metre away from the screen, I cannot see clearly out of my right eye. So I’m basically only using my left eye to see when I’m working. I then asked if it was possible to get -3,00 contact lenses to wear in only my right eye, so that my eyes were at least the same and so that the workload on my eyes would be evenly divided. He chuckled and seemed confused, and then when he saw that I was being serious, he said that that’s not possible. He didn’t explain why.
I’m obviously not an expert (hence why I managed to make the optometrist laugh with my silly question), so please explain like I’m 5: why is this not possible? Why can’t I wear a -3,00 contact lens in my right eye to have it be the same as my left eye? Why can’t we custom correct vision?
In: 5
I don’t understand what would be the harm in wearing your glasses while working. AFAIK there is no downside to that.
~~Your near-sightedness probably isn’t the reason you can’t see your screen clearly out of your right eye, as with a strength of -4 you should be able to see clearly much further than that. My guess is the problem is the astigmatism.~~ Edit: seems I got some wrong info here. See u/disruptor483_2’s comment. The -4 alone is probably enough not to see your screen well.
I don’t think (but I could be wrong) that there’s any real reason why you couldn’t get a -3 contact lens in one eye. It’s more a question of whether it makes sense, both for your optometrist to recommend it as a practice and also e.g. for insurance to reimburse it. The main reason being that, if you’re going to invest in corrective lenses, why not just correct your eyesight as much as possible? Why would you deliberately stop short of that?
~~In your case, since I think the real problem is the astigmatism, just getting the -3 correction wouldn’t “evenly divide the workload” anyway. It would have to be a -3 combined with the astigmatism correction.~~ ~~But again,~~ I think it makes more sense just to get the full prescription that you need in both eyes and wear that.
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